Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

of the decrees. The question is, whether the decrees to create and to permit the fall were
means to the decree of redemption. Supralapsarians proceed on the assumption that in
planning the rational mind passes from the end to the means in a retrograde movement,
so that what is first in design is last in accomplishment. Thus they determine upon the
following order: (a) The decree of God to glorify Himself, and particularly to magnify
His grace and justice in the salvation of some and the perdition of other rational
creatures, which exist in the divine mind as yet only as possibilities. (b) The decree to
create those who were thus elected and reprobated. (c) The decree to permit them to fall.
(d) The decree to justify the elect and to condemn the non-elect. On the other hand the
Infralapsarians suggest a more historical order: (a) The decree to create man in holiness
and blessedness. (b) The decree to permit man to fall by the self-determination of his
own will. (c) The decree to save a certain number out of this guilty aggregate. (d) The
decree to leave the remainder in their self-determination in sin, and to subject them to
the righteous punishment which their sin deserves. (3) The extension of the personal
element of predestination to the decrees to create and to permit the fall. According to
Supralapsarians God, even in the decree to create and permit the fall, had His eye fixed
on His elect individually, so that there was not a single moment in the divine decree,
when they did not stand in a special relation to God as His beloved ones.
Infralapsarians, on the other hand, hold that this personal element did not appear in the
decree till after the decree to create and to permit the fall. In these decrees themselves
the elect are simply included in the whole mass of humanity, and do not appear as the
special objects of God’s love.
2. THE SUPRALAPSARIAN POSITION.
a. Arguments in favor of it: (1) It appeals to all those passages of Scripture which
emphasize the absolute sovereignty of God, and more particularly His sovereignty in
relation to sin, such as Ps. 115:3; Prov. 16:4; Isa. 10:15; 45:9; Jer. 18:6; Matt. 11:25,26; 20:15;
Rom. 9:17,19-21. Special emphasis is laid on the figure of the potter, which is found in
more than one of these passages. It is said that this figure not merely stresses the
sovereignty of God in general, but more especially His sovereignty in determining the
quality of the vessels at creation. This means that Paul in Rom. 9 speaks from a pre-
creation standpoint, an idea that is favored (a) by the fact that the potter’s work is
frequently used in Scripture as a figure of creation; and (b) by the fact that the potter
determines each vessel for a certain use and gives it a corresponding quality, which
might cause the vessel to ask, though without any right, Why didst Thou make me
thus? (2) Attention is called to the fact that some passages of Scripture suggest that the
work of nature or of creation in general was so ordered as to contain already
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